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“He okay?”
Darlene’s smile was as wide as the Grand Canyon. She nodded, her eyes shimmering. “He’s great. He’s doing wonderfully.” She slid off the bed. “I need to get out to the house and get some things prepared.”
“Oh?” Puzzled, he looked from Darlene to his father.
“He’s coming home tomorrow.”
The door opened just then, and Darlene gave him a quick hug before sliding past Regan Thorne on her way out.
“Does Darlene have it right? He’s well enough to come home?”
Regan nodded and chuckled. “I don’t believe in miracles, but honestly, if someone had told me a month ago that I’d be releasing John Blackwell, I would have told them they were full of crap.” She looked down at her notes. “He’s still not one hundred percent, but I’m encouraged by his recovery from surgery, and he’s been asking to go home. We were able to clear his blockages, his heart is functioning much better, and his lungs are responding as well. I don’t see a reason to keep him.” She flashed a quick smile. “We’ll have home care come in a few days a week, but as long as he follows my instructions and takes his meds, he should do okay.”
Hudson waited until she left the room and then wandered over to his father’s bed. The family photo was still there. He reached for it and walked over to the window where the lighting was better. Just as before, the image of his much-younger father and all the earnest faces of him and his brothers tore at him.
The past was something he couldn’t get away from, it seemed, and ignoring it wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“What you got there?”
His father’s raspy voice brought him back, and Hudson returned to his bedside, carefully placing the photo back on the table. John sat up, his color much improved from only a few days before. His father’s eyes softened. “That was a good day.”
“It was.” Hudson nodded. “I hear you’re coming home tomorrow.”
“That’s what the doctor said. Darlene’s been fussing about. You know how women get.” John paused. “You sticking around for a while? Now that I’m not dying?”
Hudson shoved his hands into his pockets. He heard the hope in his father’s voice. “I’ve got some things to take care of, so I’m not leaving just yet. Not real sure what my immediate plans are.”
“One of those things happen to be Rebecca Draper?”
Hudson frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?” How the hell would his father know anything about what he and Rebecca were doing?
“She say something to you?” Hudson asked, curious as hell.
“Who?”
“Rebecca.”
“No, son. She didn’t have to.”
Hudson studied his father. “I know she comes to see you.”
“She does.”
“Why?” And there it was. The burning question that had been buried inside Hudson ever since he’d seen Rebecca in John’s room several weeks earlier.
John relaxed onto the double pillows behind him and sighed. “I suppose a part of her feels sorry for an old man looking down the road and seeing nothing but the end of his days here. She’s got a big heart and a huge capacity to forgive. I can see why you love her.”
“I don’t…” Hudson was brought up short. Love? He clamped his mouth shut, his eyebrows furrowed in a deep line. “We’re not in love, Dad.”
“I didn’t say anything about the two of you in a plural sense. I’m talking about you, singular. You’re in love with that girl. Probably have been all along. You’re just too dumb to know it.” He shook his head and sighed. “Something you come by honestly, if you want the truth. Sometimes the good is right there for the taking, but we don’t see it because the past is too overwhelming.”
Hudson didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Sometimes a man has got to say, fuck the past. Leave it behind and never dwell on it again.”
If Hudson was shocked at the vulgarity of his father’s words, he didn’t show it. But as he stood there staring down at a man who’d influenced so much of who Hudson was, of how he’d gotten to this place in his life, he wasn’t willing to let John off the hook. All that shit he’d buried was still there. The anger. The hurt. The blame. In that moment, he realized that not only did the past shape a person, its fingers took hold and never let go. It walked beside you every single day of your life.
A man couldn’t say, fuck the past. A man had to embrace it, he had to own it, learn from it and then move on.
